Haha, no that was just the first step. I want to make 36 different LED's corresponding to 3 octaves on the piano. Everytime a note is played on the master keyboard, these LED's have to light up, and go out the moment the key is released. I already saw my keyboard works with the "note on" with 0 velocity, when switching off a note..I only have 13 pins on my Arduino so I have to start working with multi/charlieplexing.Programming is just completely new for me so it'll take quite a while I think But thanks anyhow! Andreas

(pins 2-13 = 12 pins + analog pins = 6 pins. Total 18 pins ! )Ok, those methods are good, but not very adapted if you plan to do other time-consuming things. I can recommend you shift registers. I got mine 5 for 1 us$ from Thailand on eBay. It's of course more assembly, but if you go this way I can give you a function to light LEDs a simple way.Anoter thing : have a look at registers that handle PWM, you could handle the velocity!

On my MIDI controller with the MIDI IN issue I consolidated some solder and now found out that if I connect the RX pin to the RX pin of an empty Arduino Diecimila my onboard standalone Arduino receives the signal.

Do you have an idea of how to solve this?[edit]Hm no, doesn't work anymore this way.[/edit]

Haven't seen it mentioned here, but I combined this sketch with teh serial to midi converter and it worked just taking the midi in through USB. Thanks for the sketch! I finally got my ableton clips triggering and flasing a LED at me when launched. Nice!

It is the resistance between RX and 5V.It should be measured as about 1k to connect either MIDI or USB.So I can't for now have a standalone solution where it is possible to connect the FTDI from time to time because the resistance is then too low or too high without the FTDI.

I can put a switch to enable a parallel resistor to the 3,3k one : enabled would be MIDI, disabled would be FTDI.Or perhaps a transistor?Or a FTDI in my enclosure... I made eveything to not have the need of it, but... And it would allow me also to have MIDI over Serial/USB connectivity.

So, for now I don't really know. I could try a transistor, but would it allow 9600 or 11250bps? I'm not sure with a 2N2222? (Their frequency is 250MHz or 300MHz)

Another thing: check out Ruin&Wesen library, could help some! http://ruinwesen.com/blog?id=582